Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, April 25, 2022: Anders Leonard Zorn, a Swedish painter (#1554)

Monday, April 25, 2022

Artist of the Day, April 25, 2022: Anders Leonard Zorn, a Swedish painter (#1554)

Anders Leonard Zorn (1860 – 1920) was a Swedish painter. He obtained international success as a painter, sculptor, and etcher. Among Zorn's portrait subjects were King Oscar II of Sweden, and three American Presidents, Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. At the end of his life, he established the Swedish literary Bellman Prize in 1920.

From 1875 to 1880 Zorn studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, where he amazed his teachers with his talent. Members of the Stockholm Society approached him with commissions. This was how Zorn met Emma Lamm, early in 1881, whose background was different from Zorn's. Coming from a wealthy Jewish merchant family, she was interested in art and culture and, after a long engagement, they were married in a civil ceremony in October 1885.

Zorn traveled extensively to London, Paris, the Balkans, Spain, Italy and the United States, becoming an international success as one of the most acclaimed painters of his era. It was primarily his skill as a portrait painter that gained Zorn international acclaim based principally upon his incisive ability to depict the individual character of his model. His subjects included three American Presidents, one of whom was Grover Cleveland in 1899, as well as his wife, along with William H. Taft and Theodore Roosevelt. At 29, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur at the Exposition Universelle 1889 Paris World Fair.

Zorn's art made him wealthy and he was thus able to build up a considerable collection of art. The objects were not only bought in his native country but also during the many travels he made abroad. In their joint will, Anders and Emma Zorn donated their entire holdings to the Swedish State.

While his early works were often brilliant, luminous watercolors, by 1887 he had switched firmly to oils. Zorn was a prolific artist. He became an international success as one of the most acclaimed portrait painters of his era. His sitters included three American Presidents, nobility, the Swedish king and queen and numerous members of high society. Zorn also painted portraits of family members, friends, and self-portraits. Zorn is also noted for his nude paintings. His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms Zornkulla or dalkulla, an unmarried woman or girl from Dalarna, as the women were called in the local dialect of the region where Zorn lived.

His paintings have the freedom and energy of sketches, using warm and cool light and shade areas with contrasting areas of warm and cool tones, and an understanding of colour contrasts and reflected lights. Zorn's accomplished use of the brush allows the forms and the texture of the painted subject to reflect and transmit light. In addition to portraits and nudes, Zorn excelled in realistic depictions of water, as well as scenes depicting rustic life and customs.

Zorn was known to use a basic color palette consisting of Lead White (Flake White), Yellow Ochre, Vermilion and Ivory Black. This limited color palette shows tremendous range in terms of color mixing. A large variety of tonal ranges are possible to mix and considered as a very important development for portrait painting. However, the color palette can also be used in still life and landscape painting under certain circumstances. The most striking aspect is that a kind of olive green color is possible to obtain by mixing Ivory Black and Yellow Ochre as Ivory Black is bluish in nature.

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